The first round of voting for a French president will be a bizarre affair

PITY the opinion pollsters as France goes to the ballot box on April 21st to begin choosing its next president. When there are 16 candidates, compared with a previous record of 12 in the 1974 election, when getting on for two-fifths of the voters say they will decide only at the last minute and when quite a few people probably lie anyway (not everyone admits to being a neo-fascist in a door-step interview), sounding out opinions can hardly be an exact science. Will Arlette Laguiller really get 8% or more with her message of Trotskyite revolution? Will Jean-Marie Le Pen, with his extreme xenophobia, really come close to the 15% he won last time, in 1995?

But pity the two front-runners too. For months, the conservative incumbent president, Jacques Chirac, and the Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, have been neck-and-neck in the polls, not just for this weekend's first round of voting but also for the run-off between the top two on May 5th. Not so long ago, it was Mr Jospin who seemed to have the edge; just lately it has been Mr Chirac. But, though Mr Chirac now “senses” he will win a second term, neither man can be at all certain: the gap has remained stubbornly within any sensible pollster's margin of error.

One reason is that their programmes are so similar. When both men talk of combating crime—the number-one issue for the voters—by setting up a “super-ministry” to co-ordinate France's rival police forces, when both say they will cut taxes and help the young unemployed, it is only the professional pundits who can be bothered to look for the difference in the detail.

Another reason is that familiarity has bred contempt for both men. Mr Chirac, now 69, has been in politics for four decades. He first bid for the presidency in 1981. Mr Jospin, 64, has been around almost as long. For the past five years, since Mr Chirac called a premature general election which, against expectation, was won by the left, the two men have had to endure a “co-habitation” that has turned increasingly sour. Meanwhile, for a bored electorate, the scandals besmirching Mr Chirac's reputation (a satirical television show has wickedly named its Chirac-puppet “Superliar”) are cancelled out by the stiffness of Mr Jospin, invariably too prim and proper for his own electoral good.

But the third reason is one of simple arithmetic. The more candidates, the lower the vote for the presumed top two. Christiane Taubira, the one candidate who is both black and female, may get only 3% or less of the vote with her call for “cultural diversity” rather than “zero tolerance”, but her appeal, presented with a heady mix of rap and jazz, is to young voters who, conventional wisdom dictates, should be behind the socialist Mr Jospin. Take into account the appeal of the three Trotskyite runners, of the sole Communist and of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, an old-style socialist whose old-fashioned “republicanism” appeals also to the nationalist-minded right, and Mr Jospin will be lucky to get 20% in the first round.

So, too, Mr Chirac, as conservative-minded voters are wooed by the pro-Europe François Bayrou (see article) or by a professed Thatcherite, Alain Madelin, or by the family values of Christine Boutin, let alone by Mr Chevènement or by the far right of Jean-Marie Le Pen or Bruno Mégret. Throw in a couple of spoilers—the green vote for Noël Mamère or Corinne Lepage, or the countryside vote for Jean Saint-Josse—and the run-off will be between two men whose support in the first round may well have been the lowest ever.

Does that matter? Arguably, it is a strength of France's democracy that a citizen can cast a protest rather than a “useful” vote in the first round; that votes can first be made from the heart and later from the head. And certainly it gives the also-rans a chance to influence the front-runners. If, for example, the Communist Party's Robert Hue were to exceed the pollsters' dismal predictions, a President Jospin would have to take note. Similarly, a strong vote for Mr Madelin might encourage a President Chirac to add a dash of free-market liberalism to France's economic recipe. Moreover, some of the also-rans can expect to become ministers in a new president's government.

But a doubt nags: perhaps the strength has become a weakness. If you believe the pollsters, the vote this weekend will lead to a run-off on May 5th between two candidates who between them have won just two-fifths of the vote in a first round for which fewer than 70% of the electorate bothered to turn out. Then assume that, as in 1995, a quarter of the electorate either abstains or votes “blanc” in the second round. The winner, be he Mr Chirac or Mr Jospin, will be a president who represents all France's citizens but is the first choice of too few for democratic comfort.